Page 49 of Their Marked Mate

“I won’t murder for you,” Alex insisted.

Carlos looked over his shoulder. “I’m insulted.” He pivoted on the ball of his foot and faced Alex again. “I don’t honestly know what I’ll ask of you, but I’ll offer this compromise. I will only ask you to kill for me if we both agree that the person deserves to die.”

Alex was no stranger to bloodshed, so he released a sigh and said, “Agreed.”

“You agree to the condition, or you agree to the boon?” Carlos persisted.

“I owe you one favor as your fee for supervising a program that is in your best interest anyway,” he grumbled.

Carlos had the audacity to laugh. “I’m glad we understand each other. Expect the runner within the hour.”

Alex shook his head and started up the tunnels toward home. He was about halfway when the runner caught up to him.

“Are you Alex?” the young male asked, panting softly.

“Yes. Did Carlos send you?”

The runner nodded and handed him a folded-up datasheet. It looked identical to the one in Alex’s pocket, but apparently the occupants of Shadow City had made upgrades to this one. “Thanks.”

The runner waved as he turned and headed back down.

Luna was in the lab by the time Alex returned to the lupine village. She looked up as he entered and offered him a distracted smile. She was deep in conversation with Evelyn. Alex hated to interrupt, but this task had already taken more than half of his day.

“You now have a doctor on your team,” he told them as their conversation lagged. He handed Luna the datasheet. “This came from Shadow City, so don’t get it mixed in with ours. That one is capable of interactive communications.”

“I’ll be able to have live conversations with Carlos?” Luna asked, clearly excited by the possibility. “I thought we’d be stuck with email.”

“According to him, you’ll be able to videoconference.”

“That’s wonderful.” She rocked onto her toes and kissed him. “Thank you. This will really help.”

Pleased by her open affection, he smiled. “My pleasure. I’ll leave you to it.”

He left the lab feeling buoyant and satisfied. He’d moved his village one step closer to being able to easily claim mates and made his own mate happy in the process. His thigh muscles might be protesting the vigorous climb, but the effort was well worth it.

Next, Alex went to the stockade to see if Nate had any luck extracting information out of the feline guard. When Alex approached, Nate and Paul stood outside the converted cabin deep in conversation. “Are you two taking a break?”

“That’s not a guard,” Nate grumbled. “He’s a fucking statue.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Paul agreed. “He hasn’t said a word, hasn’t made a sound. Shit, his expression hasn’t changed. It’s like he goes into some sort of trance.”

“How did you try to motivate him?” Alex was confused by the development. He frequently left interrogations to Nate because the beta tried a variety of techniques, and his success rate was much higher than Alex’s. Alex only knew one way to extract information—beat it out of the reluctant source.

“We tried everything,” Nate admitted, shaking his head. “And I do mean everything. I don’t know who the hell he is, but he’s no simple guard.”

Alex hated complications. He heaved open the cabin’s door and walked inside. The three bedrooms had been converted into holding cells, so the cat was visible as soon as Alex entered the cabin. Even sitting down, the male was huge. His lip was swollen and bruises were forming on his face. Still, all things considered, he didn’t look that bad. He had longish mahogany hair and green eyes. He was too composed to be a guard, but Alex didn’t know him.

“I sent a team of betas out to snatch a guard,” he said without introductions. “You’re clearly no random guard, so who the fuck are you?”

“Your enemy,” the cat growled out, eyes narrowed.

Alex crossed his arms over his chest and refused to allow the cat to provoke him. “You might as well get comfortable. If you won’t cooperate, our only option is to let you rot in that cell until someone misses you.” Alex started to leave, but as he’d hoped, the cat shot to his feet.

“Wait.”

Alex turned around, but left the room between them. “What’s your name?”

The cat glared, but said, “Flynn.”